Chapter 321: The Neighbor’s Thoughts
Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
“They finally left!”
Zhao Yu wiped the sweat off his forehead, “That was close!”
That had been the closest he’d come to death. Even he had soldiers and guns, but no bullets.
Fortunately, he had managed to intimidate Meng Xian.
“This won’t do; we must expand our forces.”
Zhao Yu felt that with their current manpower, it was hard to maintain control.
Even if they had no bullets, others didn’t know that. As long as they looked like they had a large force and many guns, they could hold on for a few more days until they could manufacture ammunition.
Zhao Yu ordered the release of the eight soldiers and quickly entered the training camp.
He checked the maximum number of soldiers he could train and found out he could only train up to 23 at the moment, primarily due to a shortage of gold and silver.
Ironically, they had an ample supply of copper, iron, and tin. They were short on flesh, but they still had several hundred kilograms left.
[Do you wish to spend 23 Technology Points, 1518 kilograms of flesh, 23 kilograms of cloth, 230 grams of gold, 2300 grams of silver, and 11500 grams of copper to train 23 soldiers?]
“Yes!”
With 23 tech points deducted for the soldiers and Zhao Yu currently had 35 left.
According to his plan, the daily task reward were used to exchange for buildings, and he has to exchange the allocated points ahead of time.
“It’ll take two hours to finish the training…”
Training 23 soldiers would take 115 minutes. Zhao Yu then entered Munitions Factory.
There were plenty of items available in the for exchange, and he currently had no shortage of copper, iron, and tin.
Without any waste, he exchanged for 23 sets of weapons for the soldiers, including rifles, pistols, bayonets, and military knives.
In addition to these, Zhao Yu initially intended to exchange for nine machine guns and unlock mortars.
However, he realized there wasn’t enough iron left. He could only get five armored machine guns.
“Only five…”
Even though he couldn’t get the mortars, the machine guns would still be useful.
After the exchange, Zhao Yu had almost depleted his resources.
At the same time, he noticed many soldiers looking dejected, with ‘hungry’ statuses above their heads.
Zhao Yu also felt hunger pangs and ordered the soldiers to prepare a meal.
Their food reserves were still considerable. They had obtained two tons of foods from the fallout shelter, and in a day, they’d consumed just over 30 kilograms – enough to last for a long time.
Half an hour later, boiled cabbage was ready, accompanied by a bowl of white rice for each soldier.
However, it tasted bland. Zhao Yu added a fish-flavored canned meat from his reserves to his rice, mixing them together to eat.
The weapons and equipment from the Munitions Factory were all produced. More than half of the training was done, with 11 soldiers emerging from the camp.
Zhao Yu gathered all his soldiers. There were 25 soldiers, plus the 12 still in training, so he had a total of 37 soldiers under his command.
The land infantry and special forces hadn’t suffered losses after several battles:
10 land infantry and 1 special forces member.
Including the 12 still in training, he had a total of 48 soldiers under his command.
Zhao Yu selected 20 soldiers, forming a squad and dividing them into four teams, with five in each.
“From today, you are the base’s guard team, responsible for patrolling and guarding the base…”
Soldiers also need rest; otherwise, they would be extremely fatigued.
Therefore, Zhao Yu arranged for them to rest for eight hours and work for sixteen hours, dividing the duty hours among the four teams accordingly. Basically, at any given time. At least three teams would be patrolling and guarding the base.
Zhao Yu pointed to the four buildings left over from the old power plant adjacent to the base, “Mount two machine guns and position them conspicuously on the rooftops…”
He also instructed his men to set up sandbag barriers about one meter high, about a hundred meters away from the base in three other directions. A machine gun was also placed on each sandbag pile.
Furthermore, Zhao Yu marked the patrol perimeter: to the east, it spanned the original four buildings of the power plant, and in the other three directions, it reached as far as the sandbag-mounted machine guns.
Essentially, the patrol covered a radius of one hundred meters with the base at the center.
He did not want to experience being surrounded upon returning home again. If it happened another time, survival might not be guaranteed.
Whether it’s the patrolling guards or the machine guns, they were for show – to make a statement to outsiders.
To let people know that there was an army here, equipped with machine guns, not to be trifled with.
Once all these preparations were made, the soldiers from the training camp came out reported to Zhao Yu equipped each of them with weapons.
At the same time, a commotion from the east attracted Zhao Yu’s attention.
He climbed onto the adjacent rooftop and discovered that it was Meng Xian’s group. They had begun relocating near the eastern gate of the power plant. “So many people?!”
While he had guessed that Meng Xian had a significant number of people under her, he hadn’t expected this many. At a glance, there seemed to be at least two to three hundred individuals.
Two to three hundred might not sound like much, but in this post-apocalyptic world, that’s quite a number.
Especially considering Zhao Yu had previously been proud of having 48 soldiers, now it seemed far too few!
In this post-apocalyptic world, the majority of survivors were youngsters, with very few elderly or children could survived alone.
These people with weapons would give them considerable combat strength.
Zhao Yu observed from the rooftop for a while and noticed that Meng Xian had not crossed the eastern gate by even a step. Instead, she had set up camp on either side of the walls flanking the eastern gate..